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A couple of weeks ago I brought my Gametrekking project to completion with the release of a downloadable collection of all the travel-inspired sketches I’ve created to date. I thought I’d go ahead and copy my retrospective blog post over here.

What about my writing? Will I start reviewing games again, now that the Gametrekking project is over? I’m thinking about it. Meanwhile, here’s my retrospective:

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Today I am releasing the Gametrekking Omnibus, a downloadable collection of all of my Gametrekking creations to date. It is my tenth release of the Gametrekking project, and it will also be my final "official" release.

The omnibus includes an interface that lets you browse through all of my creations by country, some built-in slideshows to provide context, links to my written reflections, and new fullscreen versions of all my games and notgames.

To download the Gametrekking Omnibus For Windows:

Download and run the native exe installer. Note that you need to be connected to the internet during installation, and it may take a while if you do not already have Adobe Air installed.

This is going to be the final official release of the Gametrekking project, because it’s been two years since the project launched, I’ve clearly finished "the journey proper," and a downloadable collection of the work I’ve managed to produce so far seems like as good a place to wrap things up as any. I say this is the "official" end of Gametrekking, because I see the project continuing on indefinitely in some sense… It seems certain that I will keep traveling into the future in some capacity or another, and that I will continue to experiment with interactive sketches and notgames about the things that impact me. But still, I think the Kickstarter project deserves some kind of closure, and that’s what I’ve tried to create with this downloadable collection.

When I launched this project two years ago on Kickstarter I didn’t know if I was going to be able to successfully fund it, but was soon amazed by the support and generosity of the family members, friends, internet acquaintances, and complete strangers who pledged their support, and made this thing a reality.

Once the project was funded, I still didn’t know if it was going to be a success or not—or even how to judge it as such. All I had was a backpack, a half-formed itinerary of shoestring travel through a few countries in Asia, and a vague plan to make interactive sketches about the things that impacted me along the way—to try and use experimental computer games as a kind of "travel writing," whatever that would mean.

But still I am left with the question, as the project draws to a close, of whether Gametrekking was a "success." On a personal level I can look back and see that my life has been irreversibly enriched by my travels and my coding; I tried to capture some of the ways in my travel writing. Which is fine and well, but I don’t want to conflate the project with the journey (however hard it is to separate the two in my mind): the journey was personal, but the project was funded, and of a corporate nature. The question is complicated by the fact that I never defined what "success" for Gametrekking would look like, as such. Partly this was, perhaps, an oversight, but partly it was the nature of the beast: the entire venture has always existed as a kind of "leap of faith," both for myself, and for my backers—a project of possibility, of seeing what would come of a crazy, uncertain idea.

Does one consider success quantitatively, or qualitatively? When I think in terms of quantity, I cannot help but be disappointed: I wish I had a hundred creations to show for my efforts, rather than ten small offerings. I think of all the failed prototypes, and consider mounting them for display, to create a bigger catalog: I wanted to make something for every country that I traveled through, after all, and if I published my failed experiments, I could get there, and then some. But I cannot do it, because I cannot see this thing as an attempt to make a flash game for every country in Asia, like some kind of bizarre interactive Lonely Planet collection. Rather, the games have always been about expressing something personal, for me, even though they are merely sketches and doodles. And so I struggle more than I should with each one, and throw too many prototypes away, and come back too often empty-handed.

An early prototype for "The Great Moped Balancing Act", one of many creations I never published.

Still, I can try and point to other numbers in an attempt at vindication: I can say that my Gametrekking creations, while few, have together been played nearly half a million times, that they have appeared on the front page of Newgrounds, been featured in Wired and EGMi, been used for psychology research…

Slightly more to the point, perhaps, is the "why" behind the figures: the fact that Newgrounds creator Tom Fulp found two of my sketches interesting enough to feature on his front page despite the fact that they are light-years away from the fare his audience is typically expecting, to expose them to something different. Or the fact that the folks at Extra Credits considered my small notgame "Loneliness" worthy of spearheading twoepisodes of their show, as a glimpse of something interactive creations should strive for. Or the fact that Patrick Klepek wrote up "The Killer" for Giant Bomb, because he found it a breath of fresh air in a world of "power fantasy" video games. This kind of qualitative assessment is a measure of success that I am vaguely interested in.

But we’re largely still in the land of vainglory. I enjoy a little spotlight as much as the next person, but I hope it’s not why I do what I do, and as such, I’m not willing to accept it as a measure of success.

What’s left?

Just the regular people who play my games, and the notes I get from them. A lot of these are negative. A lot of them tell me to go do something hateful to myself, because I’ve wasted somebody’s time. But every once in a while I get a message like this one regarding "Freedom Bridge":

I just registered on this forum to tell you that this was one of the most intense interactive experiences I’ve ever had. I went on and watched some short documentaries about Korea afterwards in order to process the tension it had left me with.

I have seldom experienced such raw emotion from a video game. I have traveled to a few of the places featured in your games and learnt a small proportion of their history in the process. however, after playing each game I had to research more and more and more. Thank you for making such simplistic and emotionally provoking games!

Something I’d like to say… Jordan, your ‘notgames’ have done something. They hack and slash at the curtains we put up to shield ourselves from the ugly truth. That in reality, evil is decided by the individual. Among other messages. This, and your other games have a simple brutality, depressing and dark. But it’s also deeply informative and touching. They’ve given true insight on the human range of emotions, I’d say. I know that these short notgames you create bring out the best in my character. Make me sad, make me happy and many times, severely upset. I know I’ve learned from you, as many others could say they have. So please, keep on trekking. I want to learn more.

Thank you for that gaming experience… I had to get an account JUST so I can thank you for it… somewhere when the dots were slowing down, I said to myself, "I don’t want to go near them… I don’t want them to leave too" and I honestly Cried. I have never had to set the metaphysical controller down, and take in that level of emotion. I then realized that the game was called "Loneliness", and I started to reach back into my own memories of not being able to fit in at school, and then I realized that I needed to try ONE least time. The same thing happened in Life, and I am currently married to the only Girl that wouldn’t reject me, in the end of all that loneliness. I, again, thank you for that wonderful experience. Thank you… SOMUCH for this moment of self-reflection.

Wonderful story, it’s almost surreal. Being born and raised in the more impoverish parts of the states, the only thing I’ve ever known from people is deception, greed, and hatred.

I don’t post these here for a whoop-dee-doo congratulations, or a pat on the back. I post them to share with you honestly why I consider the Gametrekking project to have been a success. I post them for those of you who backed my project, and wanted it to come to something.

Ultimately, regardless of how many games I make, I have to ask myself why I’m making them; if there’s not a good reason, I don’t care if I’ve made ten or a hundred. I find the numbers, whether of games, or of plays, to be abstract and meaningless in and of themselves. Likewise, the front-page mentions and five minutes of fame quickly fade. It’s comments like the ones above that keep me going. At the end of the day I don’t care about the ratio of negative comments to positive ones: only that the positive ones exist. In my mind, if my Gametrekking creations got one person to look up the conflict between North and South Korea, got one person to remember their grandmother, got one person to believe that Taiwan’s a real place, or got one person to reflect on the nature of isolation, then the project was a success. So I have to consider it a success. I can’t force my definition on anyone else, but I do hope that my backers will agree with me.

It’s been a wonderful journey, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Why are we playing computer games, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the interactive artist isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Can the programmer-creator renew our hope for the interactive medium? Why are we playing computer games if not in hope that the creator will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?

What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking.

A quick update to let everyone know what’s going on with this site, and with me

You may have noticed that there haven’t been a lot of articles/reviews lately, and that I’ve been posting more of my own games. The reason for this, unsurprisingly, is that I’ve been more focused on game creation the last few months than I have on playing and reviewing. A while back I said that I was hoping to get into a more consistent writing schedule, but as I’ve reassessed my priorities and my available time, it has become clear that that isn’t going to happen—at least not right now.

This doesn’t mean that I’m through writing: I plan to keep writing game reviews and articles for the foreseeable future—I just can’t promise you a consistent or frequent schedule. I’m busy with a large web development project, and all of my “free time” is currently being spent on my own game design projects. Speaking of which… Read more »

Most of the games that I’ve ever played—and I’d venture to say most of the games we’ve ever created—are lacking in emotional depth. Many people have made this observation, and it’s coming to border on cliché. You probably don’t want to hear it any more. But if we want to make better games we’ve got to try and address these clichéd complaints that keep hitting us in the face, rather than just point out how clichéd they are. Over the last couple of months I’ve played two games that have impressed me with their emotional landscapes, so I thought I’d take some time to reflect on them. One of the games I think is great, and both, I believe, are important, for what they try to be and do.

The Games in Question

The games in question are A Boy and His Blob, by WayForward Technologies, and Lucidity, by the LucasArts Workshop. Each game offers some variation on puzzle-based, platformesque gameplay, and each presents a luscious, hand-painted graphical style, central to its charm. Just take a look at these screenshots: Read more »

To my dear NG readers: just wanted to apologize for the lack of content of late. I’ve been fairly busy recently, and have let my writing slip. I’ve been working on a number of small games, among other things, and have two mostly-finished projects that just need to be polished up a bit before I release them. I also have two web design jobs that are needing attention at the moment, and am in the process of teaching myself Python and C++ in order to complete yet another game for a rather tight deadline at the end of March. Once that’s out of the way I’ll be able to turn my attention to finishing a couple of games I’ve been playing, and writing the articles I’ve been eager to write for a while.

Come April, I’m also going to focus on creating a more consistent update schedule for this website… perhaps a consistent by-weekly article to start, and maybe even weekly down the road.

So thank you for your patience. If you’ve been visiting NG by browser to check for new updates, I’d suggest you subscribe to get email or RSS updates instead (or Twitter, or Facebook), so that you can be notified automatically when a new article is available.

Finally, just for fun and kicks, I’ve uploaded a couple of my oldgames to the “My Games” page (hence the header you see above), so knock yourself out with those.

Civilization is one of those games that has been hallowed nearly time out of mind. Sid Meier was, after all, the second person in history to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame. So do I really need to write an article on the series? I don’t know, but I want to. I want to write about Civilization, because I recently played the latest iterations of the game after many years away1 and was struck by the formula’s greatness yet again. I played a lot of Civ IIback in the day; enough to know, like anyone else who’s ever touched a Civ game, that the things are seriously addictive. But back when I used to play Civ III didn’t really give that fact much thought (at least not as much as my parents may have): I just knew that I liked the game, and kept coming back to it. This time around, as “one more turn” syndrome hit me once again with the force of a ton of morphine, it made me think. About games, about addiction, about what’s worth doing in life. Read more »

Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 has stirred drama in the gaming community and media alike with a scene which presents the player with a choice to slaughter hundreds of innocent civilians while undercover in a Russian false-flag terrorist group. The scene is a powerful reminder of what gaming can do, and what it should do, as it grows into more mature shoes.

Let’s pretend you have invited me over to your house to, say, participate in a heated competition of table tennis. And let’s say, in the heat of a losing streak I yelled out a threat against your life. You’d probably laugh it off as an idle threat and make the next serve. However, if I continued to follow up that threat with an intricate description of how I was going to kill you, describing morbid details, where I would hide the body and how I’d get away with it, you might begin to find it less funny. If I started including your family in such descriptions, meticulously explaining how I would kill them all one night in their sleep, drag their bodies into a rented pickup truck, then drive it to the woods and burn the bodies with the lighter fluid in my garage then dissolve the remains with lime, you might nervously smirk and start thinking about asking me to leave your house. Even further, if I began to sketch out elaborate plans about killing you, planning the best possible routes to invade your home without being detected, and describing with what weapons and in what manner I would kill you, you might begin to actually fear for your life. If I showed anyone these plans the authorities would probably be notified, and most likely, I’d be arrested for what looked like planning a murder.

Where in that story did that stop being fun and start becoming a criminal activity? Was it when I first threatened you? No, it would be when I had gone beyond an idle threat and began defining the details of its execution. Creating an increasingly believable narration of a murder would probably begin to make you believe that I might actually do it. However, if I had done all this under the guise of being a writer, published the book, and started a controversy fit for Fox news—most likely no one would be arrested. Thus we have an interesting conundrum. Detailing the plot of gruesome and/or criminal activity in private is a crime, where as publishing these detailed arrangements to the public could be, if properly contextualized, art. Read more »

Two legends created by human history have had such unifying vision that any negative review would endanger the reviewer. One is Tupac Shakur; the other is X-COM. For my longevity, Tupac can wait for now while I attempt to explain X-COM’s place in so many “top games” lists, a fact that suggests the game as necessary.

In the distantly past future of 1999, the Earth is invaded by Aliens. Thus, the E-COM, the Extraterrestrial COMbat Unit, forms as the first common human interest since the microwave. The title soon changes to X-COM because it sounds cooler, but the group’s original purpose holds steadfast: by building bases, intercepting alien aircraft, and researching anti-alien technology, X-COM aims to contain the alien threat and eventually bring the fight back to the enemy.Read more »

Critical Distance

Digital Tools

As Chris Lepine said, "Martin’s short and eclectic articles bring together an impressive range of writing, from in-depth interviews with a wide range of developers, to technical inspirations normally found in the workshop of a mad clockmaker. His interests in the mechanical, retro, conceptual, and algorithmic, should inspire any fellow artist or creative mind to pursue their own unique development style."

Lost Garden

My Shared Items

The most interesting of the articles I've been reading lately. Generally these articles will come from the other sources listed here, and sometimes I include notes. A bit arrogant to say my personal reading list is "worth reading," but I don't have anywhere else to put it, really.

Indie Love

GarageGames

Home of the Underdogs

Phenomenal site with reviews and downloads of tons of old games you can no longer find in stores. This site is an unofficial continuation of the original HOTU, which was founded by shockingly brilliant Sarinee Achavanunta in 1998. Come back to us Sarinee!